WoW Rookie: Leveling a paladin tank

New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. For links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's, visit WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide.

Want to level your paladin as a tank? You got it! Before the Dungeon Finder tool was launched in December, finding level-appropriate instance groups was well nigh impossible. Occasional knots of newborn death knights might putter about in a favorite Burning Crusade instance to scoop up some gear. The rest of the pre-Northrend instances remained ghost towns, populated only by speed-running level 80s who were farming or running low-level buddies through some quick levels. But the Dungeon Finder has re-invigorated the instances of Azeroth, Outland and beyond. What does that mean for leveling players? If you love to play in groups and instances or if you're looking ahead to raiding and want to lay down your skill base now, you can.

If you plan to spend most of your time running quests solo or with only a few other players, a Retribution (DPS) spec still makes more sense. "How many times do you really have to kill 20 mobs?" rhetorically asks Adam Holisky in a recent The Queue. "In the old world, sure, it happens enough -- but you can't really get into the meaty prot paladin points at that point, anyway. Most newer quests these days require you to kill one or two mobs in close proximity to each other and then go over and find another few mobs to kill. You rarely can pull entire areas and be effective with your AoE to the point of having an advantage over being retribution."